Panasam Akshara | Delhi HC | July 26, 2022
The AAP Government informed Delhi High Court that will conduct structural audit of high rise building and those over two decades old.The state government submitted that the audit would be conducted by reputed agency to check readiness for earthquake.It said quality test checks may be carried out on sample basis in respect of high rise buildings and government buildings having high football occupancy by local bodies concerned.Tge government in its report said that,'It was decided that High Court may apprise the necessary actions initiated by ULBs to complete entire exercise since it's a huge process,there are approximately 30lakh buildings in Delhi of which large number has come up in unplanned manner'.The government filed the report in regard of a PIL by Advocate Bhargava claiming seismic stability of building in Delhi is poor in case of earthquake there can be large number of casualties.The government said as there are many buildings in unplanned manner top priority shall be given to high rise building and government buildings and private buildings which are 20 years old and witness large football,multi storey market complex,mall, hospital, nursing home, college, school, government and private offices,the government discussed that a total of 10080 buildings identified for assessing structural safety notices have been sent to 5233 structures asking the owners to furnish structural safety certificates.It said,'Further, structural audit has been done in 4523 buildings while retrofitting has been undertaken of 82 buildings,148 unsafe buildings also demolished till date.It further reported that there are 4941 high risk buildings of total 1080 structures surveyed so far'.In June 2020 11 minor tremors struck Delhi in a matter of days from 12 April 2020 onwards,HC issued several directions to authorities to survey if buildings in Delhi were compliant with norms of seismic stability and identify non compliant ones ,and to take necessary actions also developing a action plan.